O inquietante espaço gótico na narrativa literária e cinematográfica: “The Fall of the House of Usher”, de Edgar Allan Poe, e "La Chute de la Maison Usher", de Jean Epstein

Abstract

The principal objective of the dissertation is to analyse the structure of Gothic space in the short story "The Fall of the House of Usher" (1839), written by the author Edgar Allan Poe, and the adaptation of the literary text, La Chute de la Maison Usher (1928), directed by the Polish-French film director Jean Epstein. Both narratives discuss about an antique house which was inhabited by two characters, Roderick Usher and Lady Madeline. Roderick, the narrative’s protagonist, “(s)uffered too much from a morbid acuteness of the senses […]” (Poe, 1978, p. 13) and, also, had an obsessive character. On the other hand, Lady Madeline suffered from catalepsy and a constant fatigue. The space which these characters were inserted was described as a melancholic ambient. The windows of the house resembled as empty eyes (Poe, 1978), the landscape where the space was inserted had dry trees and a lake that aroused many mysteries. Still, we reiterate that the specific objectives of this research are (a) investigate the construction of the literary and cinematic narrative, especially the particularities of each component and how the adaptation translates the short story and the aesthetic elements (b) discuss what the adaptation adds and how it recreates the content and the aesthetics of the literary text and (c) analyse the structure of space using concepts such as ambient, place, exterior/interior space and furniture (elements of the topoanalysis) in both the literary text and the adaptation, we will explore how Gothic space is translated in the cinematic narrative. Our hypothesis is that the space is constituted as a structural component of the narratives. By the end of the research, we aim to demonstrate the significance of Gothic space in the construction of both texts. Furthermore, the methodology will be bibliographic and qualitative, that is, it will be theoretically based in concepts, theories and research about literary and cinematic narrative, adaptation, space (topoanalysis) and Gothic space. Regarding adaptation theory, Thaïs Diniz (2005), Robert Stam (2006), Linda Hutcheon (2013), Julie Sanders (2016), and Thomas Leitch (2025) are theorists that will contribute to this research, and we will work with the premise that adaptation translates the adapted text and, also, bring new meanings to it. To understand space in literature, the study will utilise the perspectives of Gaston Bachelard (1989), Ozíris Borges Filho (2007, 2008) and Luis Alberto Brandão (2007) which are based on topoanalysis and the spatial constitution. The gothic space, on the other hand, will be analysed based on the work of Horace Walpole (1866; 2001), Botting (1996), Edgar Allan Poe (1999; 2003) and Luciana Colucci (2008; 2023; 2024), these authors investigate the construction of the space in the literary narrative.